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  Milford spared her the lecture. She only nodded and stood, dropped her cup in a nearby garbage receptacle and left.

  * * *

  Shel steered her car into the circular driveway in front of her green rental house. During the short drive home, she’d considered a multitude of possibilities, from Fortier having cops in his pocket to the wealthy fraud pulling off a good sob story about his ex kidnapping their child. Or was the sob story hers, as Milford hinted it could be? Either way, there was no way getting around the fact that Addison had kidnapped Harper from her biological father. She mentally abandoned the plan to have Addison help her get a confession out of Fortier. Now that the cards were stacked in his favor, it seemed like an impossible idea.

  With a head full of bad notions and worse options, she readied her house key, but the door was already slightly ajar. Shel toed it the rest of the way open and took a cautious step into the foyer.

  “It’s me.” Addison’s voice came from the vicinity of the living room. Shel’s shoulders slumped with her deep sigh of relief as she rounded the corner. Addison was waiting for her return, sitting primly on the couch in her sweet knee-skimming sundress. At her feet was the original Kathleen Fortier painting that Shel had purchased from the Loyola art sale in New Orleans. Lying on her lap was Shel’s Glock. Suddenly it seemed Shel had everything to worry about. Her eyes met Addison’s.

  “Welcome home, dear.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Shel made two strides toward the couch, but slowed dramatically when she saw Addison’s hand move to the gun lying on her lap.

  “This looks bad.” Shel’s preemptive effort sounded weak.

  “It really does look bad.” Addison nodded then went quiet. Her gaze alternated from the painting to the gun to Shel, and back to the painting again. Her voice was monotone. “I cannot argue that.”

  “Please let me explain.” Shel took a smaller, more cautious step toward her. Addison seemed too preoccupied with her own thoughts to process Shel’s words. “May I, please?”

  “When you called him Fortier, that was my first clue. I knew I hadn’t told you his last name, wine or no wine. You live the kind of life I have, and you keep very careful track of what you’re saying.” She looked contemplative. “Of course there was a possibility you’d done research, drawn your own conclusions, that sort of thing. I wanted so badly to believe you could be trusted.”

  Her words felt like physical pain. “Addison, please—”

  “I told myself it would be okay to trust you. Never mind you’d moved across the street from us in the dead of summer or that you’d made radical efforts to insert yourself into our lives.” She shrugged. “I told myself you were nosy. Later I thought you liked me. How naïve of me.”

  “I do like you,” Shel put in. “I more than like you.”

  “Stop insulting me, please.” Addison raised her hand as if she could physically halt Shel’s words. “I found the papers…” Her voice momentarily trailed off and when their eyes again met, Addison’s were watery with tears. “I found everything.”

  “That is how it started out, I admit that—but it’s not that way now, I swear.” Shel’s tone was pleading when she asked her, “I’m firmly on your side here. Can’t you tell how I feel about you?”

  “As I’ve already explained, I’m not real good at…people things.” Addison swiped away a tear that rolled down her cheek. Though clearly rattled at the breadth of the deception, she was remarkably calm. “I was very honest with you and you neglected to mention that you’d been hired by my ex to find me and Harper. It’s hard to let go of a thing like that.”

  “I’ve been trying to think of a way to tell you without scaring the hell out of you or causing you to run,” Shel earnestly told her. “Everything I’d been told about you seemed wrong. It felt wrong. I decided to hang around and decide for myself. Then I met you and fell in love.”

  “You don’t have to lie anymore.”

  Shel took a step closer, whispered, “I am in love with you, Addison. Put yourself in my situation—can you think of a good way I could have told you any of this?”

  “Any way at all at any time, really,” Addison flatly said. Her eyes looked hard like they had when Shel first met her. “I gave you my trust. It’s the ultimate deception.”

  “I know that and I’m so, so sorry. I swear I only want to help you and Harper.” Shel took another step, was almost standing directly in front of Addison. “I understand if you don’t ever want to see me again, I do—but please let me help you.”

  Shel took another step, but that was as close as Addison wanted her, evidenced by the way her index finger began rapidly tracing the gun’s trigger.

  “What a mess,” Addison quietly lamented. She appeared to consider everything with a calmness that was extraordinary considering what she’d been through. During the silence that followed, expressions that hinted self-doubt and indecisiveness crossed her features, creating an ebb and flow in the dark atmosphere. It was like watching clouds blowing in front of a bright moon. Shel willed herself to remain patient, tamping down the anxiety that was peaking and falling inside her in rhythm to Addison’s changing expressions. She dared not move, ever aware of her finger on the gun and the consequences that would arise should one of those poor moods decide to carry her away.

  At last she raised her gaze to meet Shel’s.

  “I worked hard to get us here and now look what you’ve done.” She sounded unnervingly aloof, but not necessarily homicidal… “You’ve ruined everything.”

  “Baby, please don’t do this,” Shel quietly begged of her. “Please.”

  “I have no choice. We have to start all over again.”

  “He’ll find you. He always does.” Shel’s chest felt like it would explode and she wondered if she was having a panic attack or heart attack. Without Addison in her life, she would prefer the latter; she knew that now. “Please, please let me help.”

  “You’ve done plenty.” Addison lifted the gun and pointed it at Shel. “It’s over.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Milford paced the semi-circular driveway in front of Shel’s rental house. She would stop periodically to check her watch, sigh and curse under her breath. It was nearly five thirty and her guy with his warrant for Kathleen Fortier’s arrest had yet to show. For the fourth time in twenty minutes, she pressed the button on her radio and didn’t attempt to hide her aggravation.

  “Six-oh-one, what’s your twenty?” When no answer came, she tried elsewhere. “Dispatch, this is five-ten on location. You got a twenty on my paperwork?”

  “En route.”

  “My ass. Rookie,” Milford muttered off radio. The plan had been to meet Officer Jake Miller at the residence, and together they would take Kathleen into custody. He was late and she was impatient. She moved to pop the top button of her uniform blues. She’d sweated clear through in the past half hour waddling and swearing in the late afternoon Florida heat.

  She’d already hammered at the door of the yellow house and peered under the shutters. The place looked abandoned. She’d crossed the street to Shel’s rental, but again no answer. Disgusted, she guessed Shel had made her choice. For some reason, Milford had sincerely believed it would be the right one.

  “Wrong again,” Milford angrily chastised herself aloud. She returned to the front door and pounded on it again. She’d already tried the back entrance, and though she wasn’t to enter the premises—especially without backup—she’d tried both locked doors just in case.

  The window on the front door was too high for Milford to get a look and the overgrown shrubbery situated before the windows wouldn’t make taking a peek inside easy.

  “Damn you, girl,” she said, as if Shel could possibly hear her. Milford took a heavy step down from the cement stoop and leaned her body against the closest shrub that turned out to be as thorny as it was dense. It dipped low with her weight, giving her a painful, albeit decent look into the living room. “Damn you anyway.”


  Milford’s sleeve snagged on a thorny branch and she was struggling to get it free when she saw movement against the far wall. After much blinking to focus through the glare of the glass, she saw the cat perched on the arm of the couch. While Milford knew it was highly probable that Shel could run with Addison and the baby, she couldn’t imagine the woman dragging the cat around the country only to abandon the animal in Naples.

  She followed the cat’s gaze downward and saw feet wearing shoes she recognized by now. Milford couldn’t swallow.

  The cop quickly back-pedaled her way out of the thick, thorny bush, nearly losing her balance. She caught herself, scraping her ankle against the rough cement stoop in the process.

  “Code two!” Milford practically spat into the walkie. “Code two—did you copy? Possible ten-fifty-nine. Need backup, now.”

  She didn’t have to list every code that could apply to this situation—hostage, ambulance, kidnapping—and she certainly didn’t want to entertain the notion there could be victims. Waiting for dispatch had her itchy.

  Fueled by the adrenaline rush sweeping through her, Milford threw open the flimsy screen door and made a quick evaluation of the older wooden door behind it. Squaring her wide hips, she solidly kicked the door beneath the knob until the frame splintered and separated. The door burst open, swung wide and struck the adjacent wall with enough velocity to send bits of plaster flying.

  Leading with her gun, Milford quickly cleared the empty rooms before returning to the living room. She grimaced, her heart in her throat as she approached the base of the couch where Shel lay in a heap. Her hands and feet were tightly bound by leather belts, her mouth silenced by a knotted T-shirt, wide eyes straining to see the cop over an oversized makeshift gag.

  Milford breathed an audible sigh of relief then dropped to her knees before Shel. She slid the soft, bulky gag roughly over Shel’s head disregarding both her ears and the hair that was knotted into the tie. Shel winced in pain, but only coughed for several seconds. Milford next went to work unbuckling the woman’s arms.

  “Hold the hell still,” Milford quietly reprimanded her.

  When she was free, Shel leaned against the couch rubbing the welts on her wrists, still coughing.

  “I thought you were dead,” Milford told her.

  “Disappointed?” Shel barely glanced at her before going to work at the buckle on the belt binding her ankles. “She’s gone.”

  “I figured you were too,” Milford said quietly. “Frankly, I’m proud of you.”

  “Well, I was tied up,” Shel admitted. She unfastened the belt, threw it aside.

  “Got sick of waiting for that nincompoop kid-cop to meet me at the station. I came ahead and he didn’t even show with the warrant, dammit anyway. I had momentary visions of me trying to strap you across the seat of my bike to haul you off to the ER. I’ll throttle that kid—I will.” Flustered, Milford pressed the button on her radio, but only static sounded down the line. She glanced at Shel who was now rubbing sore, welted ankles. “I can’t believe you let her tie you up like that. She stronger than she looks?”

  “She had my gun.”

  “You weren’t seriously worried she would actually hit you?” Milford didn’t wait for her response. “When did she go?”

  “Around noon.” Shel slowly stood and took a few wobbly steps, cringing all the way. “I think she went to be reinserted back into the system. She mentioned starting over again. I’ve got to find her. I’m going to Winston’s house. She was…rambling. She said that’s where she was going. He must be the one on the Naples end of this operation.”

  “Wait—you can’t do that,” Milford firmly told her. “You can’t storm some wealthy guy’s castle and demand the whereabouts of one of the people his group won’t even admit to harboring. Now you need to leave it to us.”

  “Milford, the cops haven’t done right by her in the past. Why should things be any different now?” She limped toward her bedroom, but the cop was hot on her heels.

  “Do you hear yourself? The woman tied you up…” She paused to glance at her watch, “nearly six hours ago and left you. What if I hadn’t come along?”

  “But she knew you would and so did I.” Shel found her paperwork scattered all over her bed. She sighed. “God—it might not even be in here now. She took a lot of stuff. She found everything.”

  “Sounds like she had a busy morning.” Milford dryly remarked. She folded her arms in front of her. “And so now you wanna just take off, like some kind of Lone Ranger, searching the countryside until you find her? Pray tell, who’s financing this leg of the journey—Fortier?”

  “Maybe I can stop her before she goes.” Shel madly rifled through the paperwork, her frustration increasing at knowing that Addison had removed virtually every important piece of information she’d collected. She muttered, “I need Winston’s address.”

  “I don’t get it,” Milford muttered. “Do you know how crazy this sounds?”

  Shel angrily spun around to face the cop. “I love her. I love her and I trust her.”

  Caught off guard, Milford went silent.

  She then snagged a familiar yellow note that had been floating in a chaotic sea of paperwork. It had Winston’s address scribbled on it. “In my gut I know she’s good. I can feel it.” Shel crammed the note in her jeans pocket and turned to face the cop. “Now I’m going to find her with or without your help.”

  Milford reached around to her side and tugged something on her belt.

  “Handcuffs?” Shel’s tone was terse and her arms slapped down to her sides at the jangling noise. “If you’re planning to arrest me, you should know I’m planning to resist.”

  Milford surprised her by unfastening and dropping a key on the bed in front of her. “My personal piece is under the seat.”

  “Milford…” Shel sputtered, shook her head. It was an unprecedented gesture.

  “Get going, already. When the dust settles they’ll remember I didn’t have my bike and that will spell trouble for you.” A siren could be heard in the distance, but Shel only stood staring at her. Milford raised her voice. “Get yourself in hot water and I’ll swear you stole it all. Do not screw me over.”

  Shel didn’t understand, but didn’t ask questions. She snatched up the key and bolted for the door. She’d only barely gotten her bearings on the bike when a patrol car whizzed past her. In the side view mirror she watched it come in for a landing in the driveway of her rental house. She drove.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The old two-lane bridge leading to Pine Island was teeming with early evening anglers, sipping from brown paper bags, casting lines into the water below. A rustic sign posted on the roadside told her she was in Matlacha, which appeared to be an artsy little town, judging by the colorful cottage shops and tiny hotels overlooking the water.

  Slowly, she steered the rumbling bike past fishermen lugging poles and gears, past meandering tourists in wide-brimmed hats. She passed old fishing shacks that had been revitalized into brightly painted art galleries, bars and tourist traps, each with a front yard boasting elaborate, vibrant artistic spectacle. One such display was a stunning glass bottle garden glinting in the remaining sunlight. Mesmerized, Shel looked away from the road too long, nearly colliding with a group of late day dog walkers suddenly in front of her. She hit the brake hard, hard killing the engine.

  Shel nodded her apology toward the group, restarted the bike then checked the yellow note she’d tucked into her jeans pocket. Following the scribbled instructions, she turned sharply onto a dusty gravel path and aimed the bike toward the outskirts of Matlacha.

  After a mile of nothing more than evenly dust-coated clumps of palms, the road narrowed precariously, almost disappearing under canopies of banyan trees with low, drooping branches. Only when she was about to turn around and go back to town for clarification did she spy a hint of a house through thick, tropical foliage. She continued along the winding trail that ended next to a two-story pale blue beach compound. Six sec
urity signs boldly posted around the driveway interrupted the otherwise natural environment. Shel parked, pulled the helmet off her sweaty head, and secured it on the bike seat. She headed up the path toward the house, knocked on the front door.

  Balmy breezes smelling of salt and mildew tickled sweat-damp hair and cooled her head. She relished the modicum of relief until she heard the door unlocking. When it was open, Silvia Frances stood in the doorway.

  Each woman simultaneously recognized the other; both were taken aback.

  “Miss Frances?” It was a needless question. “I-I was under the impression that Steven Winston lives here.”

  “May I ask how you got this address?” Silvia’s forced politeness hardly masked her chilly tone. Clearly she wasn’t thrilled to see Shel—perhaps anyone—on her doorstep.

  “Do you know Mr. Winston?” Sweat ran down the back of her neck and arms, stinging her abraded wrists. Shel was tired of the day and every surprise and antic that had come along with it. With more exasperation than curiosity, she asked, “Are you his tenant?”

  A figure appeared at her side, a taller, considerably older, silver-haired gentleman with smiling eyes. His grin was cordial and his tone indicated his gentle demeanor. “I’m Mr. Winston. Is there a problem?”

  “Steven, this is a woman I met at an art fair. She’s about to tell us why she is here.” Dressed as she was in evening pants and a thin jacket, her cocoa curls were still perfect no matter how casual her attire. Her posture remained defensive.

  Steven Winston politely asked her, “How can we help you, Miss…”

  “Shel Carson. I’m here about Kathleen Fortier, a woman in your network.” She looked from Steven to Silvia. “Also known as Addison James, I believe you’re familiar.”

  “I represent Ms. James’s interests in the art world, not her private life.” Silvia forced a phony smile designed to quickly appease then dismiss Shel. “And I’m not acquainted with the other woman you mentioned.”